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Starwood’s chain looses your key, but its okay they have introduced iPhone, Android devices are your room key in new Starwood hotels

The trial, which uses Starwood’s smartphone app and the low-power Bluetooth 4 wireless standard, will begin at Starwood’s chic urban Aloft hotels in Cupertino and Harlem by March.

If the pilot program is successful Starwood plans to roll out the technology to all of its Aloft and luxury W Hotel properties by the end of next year.

Guests will be able to skip the check-in queue at the front desk by checking in on the smartphone app before they reach the hotel.

The app receives a digital token which acts as a ‘virtual key’ to the room. On arrival at the hotel you head straight for your room and tap your smartphone to the lock (you can also use an ‘unlock’ gesture which mimics twisting a key).

“We believe this will become the new standard for how people will want to “It may be a novelty at first, but we think it will become table stakes for managing a hotel.”

Starwood reckons it’s covered for any low-tech wrinkles which may cruel the advanced system. Guests can get a regular key if their smartphone is lost or its battery runs out.

Likewise, the battery-powered Bluetooth locks run independent of the hotel’s IT system so they won’t be affected in the event of a computer crash, and hotel staff receive an automatic alert whenever the battery in any lock needs replacing.

Thanks for all the queries but fortunately I’m not stuck near Antarctica’s Commonwealth Bay on board the Akademik Shokalskiy, awaiting rescue or evacuation. Rather I’m sweltering in Sydney on New Year’s Eve. In my 100+ voyages to the Antarctic I’ve yet to be on a ship beset in ice (touching wood as I type). However, I’ve assisted in rescues and experienced much that the Southern Ocean can throw at you. So, since the Shokalskiy became stuck, I’ve been following the saga with great interest and here are a few observations. These are based on no more than the news reports everyone else has been seeing, too.

A summer of setbacks for Antarctic Science

Today (the morning of Tuesday 31 December) it looks like the decision has been made to take passengers and staff off the ship (by Chinese helicopter from the ice to the Aurora Australis), leaving just the Russian crew. That will take the drama out of the situation and allow the Chinese and Australian vessels to return to their resupply work for the summer science program that runs on a very tight timetable during the short polar summer. This year looks set to be a setback for ongoing Antarctic science programs – by far the the biggest being that the US budget dispute was not resolved in time to allow US programs to run this summer and, more relevant for Australian science, my understanding is that the Aurora Australis left for the rescue attempt halfway through resupplying Casey Base.

Once there is just the 20 or so crew left on the Shokalskiy they simply wait until they can get free. That won’t be a problem for the crew – the ship normally carries months of extra provisions and Russian polar ships’ crews have done extended research in the past where they only returned home after more than a year at sea. The ship is their real home and I’ve worked with some who have been on the ship since it was built more than 20 years ago.

“Like an almond in toffee”

The Shokalskiy was built to ice-strengthened Russian specs in Finland in 1982. It’s Shuleykin-class so it’s quite small (1753 GRT) and sturdy. However, it’s getting quite old and several of the others in this class have been withdrawn from working in Antarctica. Ideally, the wind will change and the ice will scatter and the ship can escape. Or it will spend a while “like an almond in toffee” as one of Shackleton’s men put it. From what we hear, I don’t have much fear for its safety. The two main risks are that the ice will push it towards land or shoals or that an iceberg could collide with it. The sea ice that the ship is stuck in is moved mainly by the wind; icebergs, on the other hand, with their deep ‘keels’ are moved by ocean currents and sometime a large iceberg looks like an icebreaker plowing through sea ice.

I hope everyone has been impressed by the way the Chinese, French and Australian vessels rushed to the rescue? That’s the seafarers’ code – to always aid a stricken vessel when it calls for assistance. However, once the people (and ship) are safe there’s the matter of who pays? This operation will have already directly cost millions of dollars (and many more in curtailed programs) so there will be a hefty bill. I’ve known rescuers to bill at exorbitant full commercial rates. Hopefully, insurance will cover it.

Down the line deeper questions will be asked. How and why did the ship get stuck? I have no idea but I bet there are rumours soon enough – and they will only be dispelled after a lengthy enquiry, if there is one.

Science, safety and tourism

For me, once the passengers, crew and ship are safe, the most worrying ramification will be the impact this has on Antarctic tourism. Antarctica is a continent run by the nations of the Antarctic Treaty “for peace and science”. There is provision for tourism and generally that operates in a safe and responsible way. Even so, many scientists regard tourism as a diversion and an unnecessary risk and some would like to see it limited or stopped. This incident will add to that pressure. Never mind that tourist ships often help scientific research programs and research bases, just as the science ships are helping a tourist ship right now. Antarctic tourists soon become and Antarctic advocates with an important role to play in promoting its preservation. The outcome of the next Antarctic Treaty meeting may be crucial to those of us who love Antarctica and love the opportunity to show it to travellers with a passion for the last great wilderness.

David McGonigal is an expedition leader in Antarctica who has visited it on more than 100 occasions. He heads back at the end of January 2014. He, with co-author Dr Lynn Woodworth, is the author of “Antarctica – the Complete Story”, “The Blue Continent” and “Antarctica – Secrets of the Southern Continent”.

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Posted on Oct 28, 2013 | Comments Off on Southern African sojourn – into Cape Town

It takes a while to reach Cape Town from Sydney. The 13 hour flight on Qantas was pretty painless but the four hour layover in Johannesburg was painful, even if the One World/BA/Qantas domestic lounge was nice enough.

Finally, we were in Cape Town with our bags and an Avis rental Polo and went looking for the Hotel Verde. This BON Hotels property only opened in August and claims to be the greenest in Africa. Clean, modern, friendly and efficient and trying to be carbon neutral – what’s not to like? It was stylish enough, too, and for about $120 per night (including breakfast and free wifi) it was good value. After a quick shower and checking in back home we fell into bed.

However, sleep didn’t come easily as I found myself pondering how remarkably like Australia South Africa often appears. From afar it’s all about reports of violence and murder but on the ground it seems surprisingly like home, hospitable and friendly, but with a funny accent.

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Morale in Egypt’s tourism industry is at rock bottom; a summer of bloodshed has frightened away all but the bravest foreign visitors from Cairo and the pyramids, and things are little better in the Red Sea beach resorts.

Yet if the business could survive the 1997 bloodbath at Luxor, when Islamist militants killed dozens of tourists at a pharaoh’s temple, it can probably recover from its current convulsions.

Already visitors are gradually returning after the worst civil violence in Egypt’s modern history, offering hope to an industry that has been brought to its knees, depriving millions of their livelihood and the economy of badly needed dollars.

However, Egyptians know that numbers can never climb back to anywhere near their 2010 peak as long as security crackdowns, street protests and militant attacks on the government persist.

Like other countries in trouble, Egypt could try an advertising campaign to lure back the Europeans, Asians, Americans and Gulf Arabs who are now largely holidaying elsewhere. But for now it won’t even bother.

“There is really no point in trying to embark on a PR campaign,” said Karim Helal, an adviser to Egypt’s tourism minister. “If you cannot convey the feeling that it is safe, nobody will come,” said Helal, a dive company owner turned investment banker.

Egypt has endured almost constant upheaval since a 2011 popular uprising toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak, but things have got much worse since the army’s removal of Islamist President Mohamed Mursi in July and the bloodshed that followed.

As international media broadcast scenes of mosques and morgues filled with bodies, governments in the main tourist markets issued warnings on travelling to Egypt.

Visitors are a rare sight in Cairo these days, even though October had always marked the start of the peak season when a gentle breeze from the Nile eases the stifling heat. In July, only about one in six of the capital’s hotel beds were occupied, according to research firm STR Global.

Even in the Red Sea resorts, largely shielded from the violence in the big cities, occupancy rates are drastically down. In Hurghada, a destination usually popular with Russians fleeing their bitter winters, only 11,000 of 50,000 hotel rooms are occupied, provincial governor Ahmed Abdullah said.

A lonely figure

Nobody has felt the consequences more than the many Egyptians – from hotel workers to guides and gift shop owners – who rely for their living on tourism, traditionally a pillar of the economy and the second biggest foreign currency earner.

Horse carriage driver Ramadan Iraqi has lost hope that he will soon see tourists return to the five-star Cairo hotel which once gave him work. He cuts a lonely figure late at night in Zamalek, an upscale district on an island in the Nile, searching for a customer so he can feed his family of six.

“I am an old man,” said Iraqi, 55. “What am I supposed to do?” It’s been 20 days since anyone rode in his carriage along the Nile embankment. Iraqi can scarcely feed his gaunt horse and can no longer afford medicine to ease severe pain in his knee.

Such individual misery is reflected at a national level. Tourism earned Egypt $9.75 billion in the 2012-2013 financial year which ended in June, before the worst violence erupted. Even so, that was down from $11.6 billion in 2009-10, the peak before the overthrow of Mubarak.

In July and August, tourist arrivals crashed by 45 percent, Tourism Minister Hisham Zaazou said. He estimated losses since the army takeover at $1 billion per month.

There are no signs Egypt’s divisions will soon heal. People continue to die in protests in cities and towns. Adding to foreigners’ anxiety, police and soldiers are coming under almost daily attack from Islamist militants in the Sinai Peninsula, site of the Sharm el-Sheikh resort.

A Sinai-based group said it tried to kill the interior minister in September in Cairo in a suicide bombing, and earlier this month two rocket-propelled grenades were fired at a satellite station in a suburb of the capital.

Anyone who wants to visit Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the rallying point for Egyptians during the 18-day revolt that toppled Mubarak, may think twice about going.

Soldiers manning armored personnel carriers and riot police keep a close eye on it and try to keep members of Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood from protesting. Only a few hundred meters away stands the Egyptian Museum, which houses some of the greatest pharaonic treasures including King Tutankhamen’s burial mask.

Remarkable comeback
Nevertheless, Egypt has been here before. On Nov. 17, 1997 gunmen descended on Queen Hatshepsut’s temple near the Nile town of Luxor. In a short time they shot or hacked to death 58 tourists and four Egyptians in their campaign for what they regarded as a pure Islamic state.

The following January and February, visitor numbers were down almost 60 percent from the previous year. Hotel occupancy rates collapsed from 70 percent just before the massacre to just 18 percent.

Yet the indus1try staged a remarkable comeback. In 1999 almost 4.5 million visitors came to Egypt, well up on the 3.7 million in 1997.

At that time Mubarak’s security apparatus was able to keep the streets much quieter than they are now. Nevertheless, hope remains that the industry can again recover, if more slowly.

Holidaymakers from Germany, one of Egypt’s biggest markets, have been starting to return since last month, when the Berlin government relaxed a travel advisory that had said tourists should stay away from Egypt entirely.

Tour agents and operators said many clients were still opting for quieter destinations. “Bookings to Egypt are coming back but they have not caught up to levels seen a year ago,” said a spokeswoman for the Lastminute.de booking website. “Customer interest is there, but it’s cautious. Bookings to the Spanish islands or the Turkish Riviera have increased instead.”

But some were surprisingly upbeat. “Weekly bookings are above those seen one year ago,” said a spokesman for DER Touristik, one of Germany’s biggest tour operators.

“We have cut capacity but can react quickly to demand. We expect a swift recovery for tourism to Egypt and expect a wave of demand for March and April.”

Most Germans seeking Egyptian winter sun are heading for the beach. TUI Germany, along with its rivals, has not resumed trips to Luxor or Nile river cruises in accordance with German foreign ministry advice to avoid overland travel in those areas.

But the company, which is part of Europe’s largest tour operator TUI Travel, can fly guests directly to Cairo.

The United States, Britain and Russia still have strict travel warnings. However, Maya Lomidze, executive director of the Association of Tourism Operators of Russia, told Reuters that tens of thousands are ready to visit their favourite destination, Hurghada, immediately if Moscow eases its warning.

Believing in Egypt

Some hotel operators, like Alexander Suski of Kempinski Hotels, expect Egypt to bounce back one day. “We really still believe in Egypt as a destination,” said Suski, who thinks a recovery would be possible in two to three years and has no plans for the hotel group to leave Egypt.

Austrian-based Kempinski already runs an upmarket hotel in Cairo which opened shortly before the 2011 uprising, and another on the Red Sea near Hurghada. A third on the outskirts of Cairo is due to open next year.

However, much depends on whether Egypt can regain some degree of stability following the long period of turmoil.

Capital Economics estimated the industry’s losses ranged from $250 million to $650 million a month. William Jackson, an economist at the London-based group, said a rebound is possible, but that “the events over the past two and a half years give us every reason to be cautious about thinking that will happen”.

There are bright spots; unlike in 1997 Islamist militants have not targeted tourists. Cairo visitors are probably at much greater risk crossing the road through the capital’s anarchic traffic than they are of getting caught up in the street violence, which affects only small areas of a huge city.

In the meantime some tourists are enjoying a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the riches of the Egyptian Museum or the Sphinx up close, without being jostled by tour groups.

“It’s paradise: the pyramids, the museum, everywhere is empty because of the situation,” said Alvero Rocca from Argentina, a country which has endured its own upheavals in recent decades.

“For Westerners, perhaps it’s more problematic … We in Argentina are more used to the chaos,” Rocca said at Cairo’s Khan al-Khalili bazaar which was nearly empty of tourists. “For us it’s better. I know for Egypt’s economy it’s a catastrophe.”

Shutdown Cancels Entire US Antarctic Research Program

As scientists had feared, today (Oct. 8) the National Science Foundation announced it was canceling the U.S. Antarctic research program for this year because of the ongoing government shutdown.

Scientists and contractors already stationed at the three U.S. science bases on Antarctica will be sent home and a small staff left behind to maintain the structures and equipment, the National Science Foundation (NSF) said.

The announcement was a devastating blow for the polar science community. The shutdown means the cancellation of millions of dollars of planned research. Graduate students may have to stay in school longer because they won’t get the data they need to complete their research. Contractors are losing their jobs. Other countries, including New Zealand, France and Italy, rely on the United States’ sea-ice runway at McMurdo Station and may not be able to conduct their own research after the pullout. [Weirdest Effects of the Shutdown]

Though the NSF said it would work to restart science activities after the government shutdown ends, many U.S. scientists will miss their timing window for the summer research season, which started Oct. 3.

“It makes the blood boil,” said Ross Powell, a geologist at Northern Illinois University and chief scientist for the WISSARD project, the first drilling expedition to discover life in a buried Antarctic lake.

This year, Powell and his colleagues planned to drill into the spot where the Whillans Ice Stream meets the sea. Remote sensing surveys suggests water flows from the buried Lake Whillans into the ocean underneath the Ross Ice Shelf, creating a hidden, estuary-like setting.

The NSF has invested $10 million in the project, not counting the hours and hours of planning and operational time, Powell said. “If we don’t get this field season, basically, we’ve wasted half the money,” Powell told LiveScience.

Dawn Sumner, a geobiologist at the University of California, Davis, expected to leave for Antarctica on Oct. 17. Now, Sumner said she’s in a holding pattern, waiting to see if Congress “gets its act together” in time for her to salvage her research plans, she told LiveScience.

“Mine is somewhat time-sensitive; we can’t do it in midsummer,” Sumner said of her research on microbial life in Antarctic lakes, though she put her plight in perspective. “Although I am very disappointed in losing some, possibly all, of my research, the impacts on other people’s health and safety are much more dire.”

Other projects that could be affected by the pullout include NASA’s Operation IceBridge, which tracks yearly changes in the polar ice, as well as the ongoing monitoring of climate change. Interrupting the unbroken data sets researchers gather to gauge global warming makes it difficult to analyze trends, many scientists have said.

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Posted on Oct 9, 2013 | Comments Off on America’s Antarctic Program in Jeopardy Through US government shutdown

National Science Foundation announced Tuesday that it is putting its three Antarctic scientific stations in deep freeze.

The federal government shutdown is reaching all the way down to the South Pole.

The National Science Foundation announced Tuesday that it is putting its three Antarctic scientific stations in deep freeze just as scientists are starting to arrive for the start of a new research season.

The NSF runs three stations in Antarctica spending just under $400m a year there. It often takes weeks for some 1,200 researchers to get to the southern continent by boat or plane.

Scientists say October is when spring and summer research starts in Antarctica. A ship had been scheduled to arrive Wednesday with researchers, including those working on a long term study that has tracked penguins and other creatures since 1990.

Adaptive reuse of the old Quarantine Station at North Head Manly has ensured public access to and awareness of the buildings behind the stories of those who came to Australia through the site (from nineteenth century migrants to the orphans of Operation Babylift from Saigon in 1975) and those who have worked to protect them. The Quarantine Station has integrated environmental management and sustainable management practices into operation of a successful hotel.

For twelve consecutive years, the Skal International “Sustainable Development in Tourism” Awards have been presented during the Opening Ceremony of its annual World Congress. Skal recently closed its 74th World Congress aboard the Carnival Glory, the first time this yearly event took place on a cruise ship. This year, Q Station Retreat in Australia won an award in the category of Urban Accommodation.

This award will increase international awareness of this iconic Sydney site and allow the hopes and dreams of those who passed through it to be remembered. Quarantine Station has also recently been named as a finalist in the New South Wales Governmental Green Globe Awards for operation of the site on the principles of conservation, heritage protection and sustainability wherever possible having regard to the heritage nature of the buildings in which we operate. The Quarantine Station, trading as QStation, has come to be known as the “Jewel in the Crown” of Sydney Harbour National Park and has already won many awards and media commendation for our serene setting, stylish reuse of this historic place and our pristine natural environment. Over the last five years we have consistently won awards for best MICE and Upscale boutique hotel properties at the Hotel Management Australia Awards, and have received grants from the state and federal governments to support our conservation programs.

Quarantine Station recognizes the valuable legacy of this harbor-side site and are committed to the conservation and interpretation of the Q Station as a place of national and international significance in the history of health and migration. To date Mawland has committed $17M to development of the site, with $8 million to the conservation of the site, creation of a public museum and curation of the historical collections. Quarantine Station cares for over 15,000 historical items, the most significant of which are on public display. Indeed, the site is sustainable by the very nature of its complete adaptive reuse of the buildings and operational structures of the old quarantine station.

Quarantine Station is listed on the Australian National Heritage Register alongside fellow harbor icons: Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It is a stunningly beautiful and lovingly restored retreat, home to the story of migration to Australia and custodian of historical artefacts of national significance. Within its 30 hectare estate lie 65 buildings and nearly 200 years of memories from post European arrivals.

Mawland is very proud of our record on this site. We have established a viable commercial operation which is managed by Accor and have received many awards and kudos for our operations on site. Within the limitations of operating on a widely spread area, which involves balancing daily logistics of transport of guests, food and beverage, staff and supplies , arrivals of guests by water and road, compliance with strict State consent conditions and operation within historic premises which were not purpose built for operation of a hospitality business we have achieved public, governmental and media approval for sustainability and investment in the natural and cultural heritage of the site.

Within our code of having minimal impact on the natural environment we are welcoming about 3000 visitors per week to the site. We are a showcase for environmental management and cultural preservation.

Our approach to adaptive reuse has been applauded and as a result we have been invited to prepare a paper for the influential Tourism and Transport Forum on the Adaptive reuse approach to redevelopment of government assets and our Directors Max Player and Suzanne Stanton have been invited to join the Sydney Harbour National Landscape Steering Committee.

Extensive publicity and marketing of the site, highlighting sustainability, conservation, adaptive reuse and the cultural and the fascinating history of the site has led to QStation being seen as one of the emerging icons of Sydney tourism.